Like Some Lonesome Child
by semperfratres
Summary: Sam couldn't have been more than five when he started asking questions. How come they didn't have a mom, why'd they always have to move around, where'd Dad go when he'd take off for days at a time? Dean had begged him, "Quit asking, Sammy. Man, you don't want to know."


**Disclaimer: **I don't have any claims to Supernatural or any of its characters.

**Like Some Lonesome Child**

Dean Winchester sometimes wonders if anyone really knows what it means to love like he does. He wonders if other people stay awake at night thinking about love. How far do they go for love? Does it drive them, is it their reason for living? Has anyone else ever given themselves totally over to it like he has? Does anyone else have any idea what love means?

Sometimes love means sacrifice. Sometimes it means doing things that are hard, things you don't want to do, to help the person you love. Sometimes it means leaving. Sometimes it means protecting. Sometimes love means lying and killing and dying. But it always, _always_ means Sam.

That's what Dean knows, what is seared into his mind and heart and soul.

Sometimes he still has doubts though. He knows the truth, but the execution- well, it's hard sometimes.

Like now. Dean has to choke back the bile as he cleans the blood off his knife, as though he hasn't done this hundreds (thousands) of times before. He's used to it, but sometimes- sometimes it still gets to him.

The night air is cool on Dean's face and that helps. And Sam's smiling at him across the field as he gets the salt out of the trunk. That helps too.

The woman's face and her lifeless eyes don't help though. The fact that she's still warm as he drags her to where they'll burn her body brings the bile back up and he has to take a step back. Breathe deeply. Get a hold on himself, because it won't do for Sam to see him struggling with what they have to do.

It doesn't even make any sense, his strange reactions. This has been his life for 32 years, in one way or another. _Suck it up, Winchester. This is right, this is good, this is love._

_This is pure._

She's on the pyre they've made, salted up, and burning, the flames climbing higher and higher. Somehow the combination of heat from the fire and cold from the night is exhilarating and comforting and Sam is still grinning, adrenaline still pumping, triumphant and sure. Dean watches the flames flicker and notes the way the light dances across his brother's face. Sammy's always been at home with fire; funny how that's how it all began.

Their mom burned up in a fire when Dean was four years old and Sam only six months. She burned in Sam's room. Dean sometimes thinks that's how Sam can be so brave.

Dad was never right after that. He bounced from town to town, job to job, motel to motel… bar to bar. He tried, he really tried to be there for his boys. But there wasn't enough of him. Dean always thought that part of him must have burned up with Mom.

Dean was young when their lives changed but he grew up fast. He knew the dirty, ugly truth of their life- only half a parent alive and no hope to speak of.

Sam though- Sam didn't know. And Dean hadn't wanted him to find out. Still, Sam couldn't have been more than five when he started asking questions. How come they didn't have a mom, why'd they always have to move around, where'd Dad go when he'd take off for days at a time? Dean had begged him, "Quit asking, Sammy. Man, you don't want to know." He just wanted to protect Sam from the truth, keep him safe. But Sam was such a curious kid and more than that, he needed reasons- reasons why there were holes in his life where love should have been.

What was Dean supposed to tell him? That their mom died for no reason, that their dad couldn't cope and only found solace at the bottom of a bottle? That they would never be like anyone else, never grow up normal or right, and there was no good reason why?

_No._

Dean looks at the quiet pride on Sam's face and suddenly he's at peace and the guilt stops coming and the bile stays down. Sam's a hero. Dean did that for him. That's what love means.

When Dean was ten and Sam was six, Dean told him all about the monster that killed their mom. How something evil had come into their house and stolen from them what other kids had. Evil existed and that's why things were bad sometimes- because monsters were real. And monsters? Monsters could be killed. That's what Dad did for a living, why they moved so much, why they had to be different than other kids. Because their dad was a superhero and their pain had meaning.

It was better than truth, right?

Sam had eaten it up. He wanted to know all about the monsters Dad hunted, the people he saved, how he did it. So Dean told him. While other kids grew up on fairy tales and comic books, Dean turned their life into an adventure for Sam. He told Sam all about ghosts and demons and werewolves and rock salt and iron and fire. Sam had a thirst for learning and he memorized all the methods, all the monsters. But just knowing wasn't enough. If they were going to grow up to be superheroes like Dad, Sam's little mind reasoned, they needed to practice.

That's when things started to get hard for Dean, when he had to buy guns and knives so Sam could learn how to kill monsters. But he found if you were creative enough and shady enough, anyone could buy just about anything. He'd thought Dad was going to be a problem but the "hunting" lifestyle kept him absent so Dean had the time to learn how to use a gun and then teach Sam. (_What are you doing, giving your little brother a gun? _a voice in the back of his head had asked. But it was harmless… just a little something to help Sammy feel more real. Love brought hard choices, he knew.) Sam, caught up in the stories and the make believe and the training was happy.

Sam had trained so well. Dean claps his brother on the shoulder and they gather up the gear, heading back to the Impala. They worked so smoothly together, so seamlessly. They were partners. Surely no one loved like they did, for no one killed like they did. Dean is sure of this and he walks a little taller, a little straighter. The shapeshifter is dead and it was a good hunt. Sam tosses Dean the keys and Dean locks the trunk of his baby.

It had taken a little while for Dean to notice that Sam was different, even by their screwed up standards. Dean had assumed that Sam would grow out of the stories of monsters, the way other kids grew out of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. But when Sam was ten years old and Dean was fourteen, Sam brought Dean the gun from under their bed (the one with the silver bullets) and told him that the motel front desk clerk was a werewolf. Dean didn't know what to do but tell Sam that he was sure that wasn't true. The clerk couldn't possibly be a werewolf. He suggested a stakeout, to prove it. (He couldn't tell Sam that monsters weren't real. Not yet. Sam still needed it, needed the meaning.) But it was then that he found out that Sam didn't just see the world differently than most people, he literally _saw _things that others didn't. They watched that clerk and Dean saw a man. Sam saw a man with fangs and claws and heard a feral cry. Sam saw the clerk run towards them, intent on eating their hearts and he cried out for Dean, cried out for his big brother to save them. All Dean saw was a man walking.

The first time Dean killed, he was fourteen years old, and the world, if they knew, would have said he killed a man. But Sammy said he'd saved them from a monster and that became Dean's truth.

Dean looks at his brother as they get into the car and knows that he's looking at a madman. He's done the research, knows his brother must have had a psychotic break because of his early life, knows that Sam's got to be schizophrenic or something. But that's not fair- Sam's world is just different. He sees things that aren't there, but why does that make his world less important than anyone else's?

It just makes it more work but Dean's always been up for it. That's what love means.

Sam's world had grown more complex and hard as he'd grown older. He'd begun rebelling against it. He'd seen Dad as the man forcing him to be a hunter instead of letting him be a normal person. And yet, it was Sam who still saw vampires and ghosts where others saw human beings. It was hard for Dean, "hunting" with Sam and yet hearing Sam rant and rave against the "hunter's life". He was helpless as Sam grew angrier and more defiant, helpless when Sam finally left for good, screaming at a dad who wasn't there, at a dad who had taken his life years before. Sam hadn't listened when Dean begged him to stay, but had curtly said that Dad had told him that if he left, he should never come back. And Dean had known that letting Sam leave would be harder than every kill he'd ever made. The kills were innocent people but he killed for his brother, the brother always beside him. Letting him go was so much worse. But sometimes that was what love meant.

Dean turns the key in the ignition as Sam pulls out the map, looking for the best way to get back to the interstate. Yes, the killing- the killing was hard. But having Sam next to him, happy and sure and good, makes Dean certain it's worth it and he's ashamed at his weakness from before.

It was Jessica who'd finally brought Dean back into his brother's life. She'd called him, said she'd found his number on Sam's phone, she was the girlfriend and could he please come and visit Sam? Take him to see their dad maybe? She'd thought that Sam could use some time with family, something was a bit off.

So Dean had come roaring back in like the sound of his car and he hunted again for the first time in years. And the death of Constance Welch brought him no pain, only joy, because he was back in his brother's world, even if that was a world he couldn't see.

Sammy was more off than usual when Dean had left him back at the apartment with Jessica but it took Dean a few minutes to get really worried. By the time he'd gotten back to them, Sam had killed Jess and started a fire. But Dean knew that for Sam, it was the monster, the same one that had killed their mom, who had done these things.

And as Dean had pulled Sam from the fire, he could only be grateful that Jess was dead because she could never love Sam like Dean did, never protect Sam like Dean did, never do for Sam would Dean could.

And they'd begun to hunt again and Dean's hands had grown bloody again, through "Hell" and "the Apocalypse". But he'd grown to love the blood for Sammy's sake, even when he hated it. That's what love means.

Sam's face is happy, which is absurd given that he's just looking at a map. But Dean knows that Sam feels like the superhero Dean had always told him Dad was. And that's why the death of that woman, the "shapeshifter", is so much greater than her life. Her life- what was it? It was nothing compared to the life her death gave Sam.

Dean finally breaks into a grin, looking at his brother. "Well, while you're taking forever to find directions, I'm just going to try trial and error. Bet I can get us there before you figure it out."

Sam scowls at Dean. "Jerk," he mutters.

"Bitch," Dean answers back with a laugh and shifts the Impala into gear. No more wondering. This is love, and no one else has the courage or the strength to find it. The price is heavy but Dean is willing to pay it for Sam.

_This is love._


End file.
